The DC Circuit just overturned a District Court opinion that granted three Bagram detainees who were captured outside of Afghanistan (though the government contests this claim for one of the detainees) the right to a habeas proceeding. It based its argument on three factors the Supreme Court listed in deciding in Boumediene that detainees at [...]

The other day, when Sheldon Whitehouse asked Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar why BP had gotten an exemption from the full-blown NEPA process from which it presumably should have been categorically excluded, Salazar referenced a 30-day deadline from Congress to approve exploration plans. Senator, there has been significant environmental review, including Environmental Impact Statements that [...]

I’m thoroughly unsurprised by the news of Dennis Blair’s ouster. After all, it’s an impossible job that appears to serve one purpose: to provide a deck chair you can rearrange every two years as a scapegoat for our continuing inability to detect terrorists even with all the surveillance toys we’ve got. (Actually, if you’re Michael [...]

Close to midnight on May 3, authorities arrested Faisal Shahzad for attempting to bomb Times Square. Over the following two weeks, the authorities questioned Shahzad, even as Pakistani intelligence detained Shahzad’s family members. The government told the press that Shahzad had waived his right to be charged in court and (though no one focused on [...]

Yeah, I know. Of course BP is saying, “no one could have predicted.” Of course, BP had a big incentive not to predict these things: one of the reasons it was able to get an exemption from an individualized Environmental Impact Study is that it estimated the largest possible spill from this well to be [...]

In yesterday’s Transportation Committee hearing, John Hall hammered BP American President Lamar McKay about something a number of others have, as well: the amount of money BP has spent on greenwashing of late. The answer? $10-12 million last year and $20 million this year. So it’s roughly probably about the same or maybe a little [...]

At yesterday’s hearing on the BP Disaster, Peter DeFazio and Jerrold Nadler hammered BP America President Lamar McKay on the relative toxicity and efficacy of the dispersant Corexit as compared to some other dispersants. They pointed out that Corexit is one of the most toxic of the approved dispersants and is not as effective as [...]

Noah Shachtman focuses on one troubling part of this long article on the Obama Administration’s fondness for Predator drones: the suggestion that the Administration prefers killing alleged terrorists to capturing them, since we don’t have a good place to hold them. But there’s another aspect I find just as troubling: the other uses for Predator [...]

Of course, why anyone would need to introduce legislation to prohibit the killing of US citizens with no due process, I don’t know. Isn’t there already a piece of paper that prohibits such things? Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced today that he will introduce legislation that would end the practice of targeting U.S. citizens for [...]

Faisal Shahzad rather suddenly got arraigned and got a lawyer yesterday. Josh Gerstein noted that the arraignment happened on the 15th day since Shahzad’s arrest–the lower range of time the Obama Administration has floated for its changes to Miranda. But the LAT reports that Shahzad decided he no longer wanted to be questioned by interrogators. [...]